Thammasat University students interested in literature, history, political science, and related subjects may find a new book useful.

Dangerous Intimacy: The Untold Story of Mark Twain’s Final Years is an Open Access book available for free download at this link:

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt8779q6kr;query=;brand=ucpress

The TU Library collection includes many books by and about Mark Twain.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Twain showed awareness of Thailand in his short story The Stolen White Elephant, in which a Siamese white elephant, being transported from Siam to Britain as a gift to Queen Victoria, disappears in New Jersey.

In another short story, Twain wrote about Personal Habits of the Siamese Twins, referring to Chang Bunker and Eng Bunker, Siamese American conjoined twin brothers whose fame helped make the expression Siamese twins become synonymous for conjoined twins.

Here are some observations by Mark Twain:

We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven’t all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

• Answering a toast, “To the Babies,” at a banquet in honor of General U.S. Grant (November 14, 1879).

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

• Draft manuscript (c.1881)

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

• “Advice to Youth”, speech to The Saturday Morning Club, Boston, 15 April 1882.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.

• Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1887

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

• Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

• American Claimant (1892)

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

• New York Herald, October 15, 1900

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

• The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

When in doubt, tell the truth.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. II

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. VIII

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. XX

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. XXI

“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. XXV

Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. XXVII

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.

• Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, Ch. LXI

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.

• The Autobiography of Mark Twain

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

• “Taming the Bicycle” (1917)

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

• Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888

I have not read Nietzsche or Ibsen, nor any other philosopher, and have not needed to do it, and have not desired to do it; I have gone to the fountain-head for information—that is to say, to the human race. Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. I am the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with diligence and strong interest all these years in my own person; in myself I find in big or little proportion every quality and every defect that is findable in the mass of the race. I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born; I knew I should not find a single original thought in any philosophy, and I knew I could not furnish one to the world myself, if I had five centuries to invent it in. Nietzsche published his book, and was at once pronounced crazy by the world—by a world which included tens of thousands of bright, sane men who believed exactly as Nietzsche believed, but concealed the fact, and scoffed at Nietzsche. What a coward every man is! and how surely he will find it out if he will just let other people alone and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

• Autobiography of Mark Twain

I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse… If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race… His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies…

• Concerning The Jews, Harper’s Magazine 1898

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)